George Meredith Quotes

There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts,--fine breeding.

'GQ,' you've been patiently and stylishly educating me forever. To be truly stylish, you have to be kind and courteous.

Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.

I am at heart a gentleman.

I'm very much a gentleman in what I do.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

It's not like it's hard to be decent and respectful and well-behaved. I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school.

One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.

My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.

I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.

Courtesy is a lady's armor.

The only true source of politeness is consideration.

I want a gentleman. Someone with manners.

Obviously I'm going to be polite, so nobody has anything to fear from me.

I find it upsetting to see the erosion of manners. It's very scary. Where are the 'pleases' and 'thank yous?'

Etiquette does not render you defenseless. If it did, even I wouldn't subscribe to it. But rudeness in retaliation for rudeness just doubles the amount of rudeness in the world.

I raised my kids kind of old-fashioned - if you don't have something nice to say, then don't say it at all. I teach love, acceptance, and tolerance... I sometimes think that this generation is lacking in decency.

There's no excuse for rudeness.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

I think the thing I miss most in our age is our manners. It sounds so old-fashioned in a way. But even bad people had good manners in the old days, and manners hold a community together, and manners hold a family together; in a way, they hold the world together.

I was taught very early on how you treat people is actually what matters.

A bad manner spoils everything, even reason and justice; a good one supplies everything, gilds a No, sweetens a truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself.

Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people's bad manners.

Anytime anybody is rude, it makes me double-check my own behavior to make sure I don't do that to other people.

It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite.